29 August 2011

back to school riddle

happy back-to-school season!  this is the first year in a very long time that i am not going back to school myself.  i'm keeping in touch with all my teacher friends across the country and internationally and it's strange to hear about their back-to-school responsibilities and to not have some of my own.  i think i'm really going to miss teaching this year; once school is in the swing of things and i don't have a class of my own to brag about, i'm not quite sure what i'll do.  [teacher friends: get ready for me to want to come and hang out with your classes.] 

anyway, to keep my brain up and running to its highest potential, i gave it a little task this evening.  well, really, daddy-john gave me the challenge and i merely accepted.  once i found out that he hadn't actually solved the riddle, i was all the more eager to complete my assignment.  apparently einstein wrote this riddle last a very long time ago and said that 98% of the world's population would not be able to solve it.  was he right? 

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fish riddle
there are 5 houses in a row that are each a different color.  there is a person of a different nationality in each house.  the owners drink a certain drink, they each smoke a certain brand of cigarettes and also have a certain pet.  no owner has the same pet, smokes the same brand of cigarettes nor drinks the same drink. 

the question is: who has a fish? 

clues: 
- the british man lives in the red house
- the swedish man has a dog for a pet
- the danish man drinks tea
- the green house is to the left of the white house
- the owner of the green house drinks coffee
- the person who smokes pall mall has a bird
- the owner of the yellow house smokes dunhill
- the person who lives in the middle house drinks milk
- the norwegian lives in the first house
- the person who smokes blend lives next to the one that has a cat
- the person who has a horse lives next to the one that smokes dunhill
- the one who smokes bluemaster drinks beer
- the german smokes prince
- the norwegian lives next to a blue house
- the person who smokes blend has a neighbor who drinks water
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immediately upon receiving the riddle, i assumed it was some sort of trick and the answer could easily be found within 5 minutes.  however, i worked on it for an hour.  to confirm your suspicions, all of the owners do actually live in their fun-colored houses (a question i had before starting, going along with the trickery theme).

good luck! happy back-to-school! 

x.  

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